Re: Limiting environment use for setuid/setgid programs only?

[Thomas Dickey]

On Sat, Apr 15, 2023 at 10:29:38AM +0200, Sven Joachim wrote:
> The ramifications of CVE-2023-29491 can be limited by configuring
> ncurses with --disable-root-environ.  However, this disables all use of
> the ncurses environment variables by the superuser which has the
> potential to break scripts and makefiles.

Revisiting this - what scripts are setting $TERMINFO (or $TERMINFO_DIRS)
that root should pay attention to?

(makefiles don't _need_ environment variables)

These pathnames are addressed by the --disable-root-environ option:

   TERMINFO
   TERMINFO_DIRS

as well as these (not used in Debian):

   TERMCAP
   TERMPATH

> Would it be possible to add a new option that only limits environment
> use for setuid/setgid programs, like the --disable-root-access behavior?

It's possible,

But I don't see why root should be more permissive than a setuid program :-)

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey <dickey@invisible-island.net>
https://invisible-island.net

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